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The Education Debate: Is it time to decolonise the curriculum? Wednesday 5 July, 6-7.30pm, Magdalen College School.

The demand to decolonise education is growing ever louder. From Rhodes Must Fall in South Africa, and here in Oxford, to the “Why is my curriculum so white?” campaign at University College London, there is a call to make school and university curricula more representative and diverse. In January this year, students and academics at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London hit the headlines with their campaign to Decolonise Our Minds because of newspaper reports that this would mean dropping Plato, Locke and Kant from the Philosophy syllabus. Meanwhile, the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford announced a major shakeup to its curriculum last month, as undergraduates will now have to sit a compulsory paper on non-British, non-European, history.

Are these sensible steps towards a more inclusive and diverse educational system, or an attempt to rewrite history around contemporary obsessions with identity and culture? Does the focus on recognising excluded voices serve to make a more inclusive educational system, or does the demand to decolonise risk reflecting back to students their own cultural identity rather than taking them beyond their existing cultural and intellectual horizons?

Speakers:

Rekgotsofetse (Kgotsi) Chikane is National President of InkuluFreeHeid, a non-partisan youth-led organisation that seeks to deepen democracy in South Africa. He is a former Mandela Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford, and a recent YALI Mandela Washington Fellow. Kgotsi was one of the leaders of the original Rhodes Must Fall campaign in South Africa.

Dr Cheryl Hudson is Lecturer in American History at the University of Liverpool. She was formerly the Academic Programme Director at the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford and was an Associate of the Centre for the Study of Higher Education, University of Kent, 2015-16. She has taught at Oxford, Sheffield, Coventry, Vanderbilt and Sussex. She is the author of, amongst other things, A Century of Academic Freedom (2016).

Professor Pekka Hämäläinen is Rhodes Professor of American History at the University of Oxford, and a fellow of St Catherine’s College, Oxford. He is a historian of early and nineteenth-century North America, specialising in indigenous, colonial, imperial, environmental, and borderlands history. His book, The Comanche Empire (Yale, 2008), received twelve awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Merle Curti Award, and the Caughey Prize and has been translated into Spanish and French.

Kenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and broadcaster. He has presented Analysis, on BBC Radio 4, and Nightwaves, on BBC Radio 3, and was a regular panellist on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze. Kenan is the author of numerous books, including Multiculturalism and its Discontents: (Seagull, 2013),  From Fatwa to Jihad: The Rushdie Affair and its Legacy(Atlantic, 2009 ), Strange Fruit: Why Both Sides are Wrong in the Race Debate (Oneworld, 2008), and The Meaning of Race: Race, History and Culture in Western Society (Palgrave, 1996). His latest book is The Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethics (2014).

Full details: http://www.artsfestivaloxford.org/whats-on/debates-and-discussions/the-education-debate

I have put together an expert and opinionated panel who come from very different sides on this issue. Once they have given us their initial thoughts I will be keen to come out to the audience for points and arguments. For this reason, I would like as many students as possible to have the opportunity to attend.